I have had an account on Flickr since 2007 and have uploaded more than 3,100 photographs in that time that have been viewed by more than 107,000 people.

I have made many online friends as a result of Flickr and the website has been useful in attracting customers to my own photo website Photologium. I have always believed that Flickr is the best photo-sharing website and continue to believe this. But something disturbing has been settling in the back of my mind about Flickr for quite some time.

Recent posts by high-profile photographers have started to ask the haunting question: Is Flickr dead, or at least in decline?

Evidence for a decline in Flickr is scant and unreliable. But a number of anecdotal factors point to a shift within the photo-sharing community in the last 12 months. In particular, Google+ has been launched and Google has been working hard to gain a share for Google+ via Picasa in the photo-sharing market. Additionally, sites like 500px have slowly built a stronger following and even Facebook has improved its photo-handling capabilities, despite it still being an awful place to deposit photographs.

One of the more worrying indicators is the well-documented lack of innovation at Flickr.

Whilst Facebook, Google+ and Twitter are constantly tweaking their interface and making changes (with varying degrees of success), Flickr has remained relatively static for quite some time. In fact, Yahoo has been sacking staff including high-profile key staff at Flickr. This can’t be good for a company that desperately needs to be dynamic and innovative.

One of the most insightful articles came from Flickr designer Timoni West, who ratted on her employer out of frustration at the complete lack of attention paid to the “recent activity” page on Flickr. Ms. West made some salient points about the social aspects of Flickr which (I agree) are the most important part of the website, but haven’t received attention in years.

Yahoo has become so lazy and stagnant that Microsoft tried to buy it in 2010 and launched a hostile bid, only to be rebuffed by Yahoo. This would have made Microsoft the owners of Flickr. I cannot help but wonder if that would have been a good thing.

Just this week Yahoo appointed a new CEO in former PayPal boss Scott Thompson, who has already addressed the staff by saying that the company needs to get “back to innovation”. This is an encouraging development.

What’s wrong with Flickr?

Here are my main concerns with Flickr at present:

1. The front page doesn’t do its job. 

I fundamentally agree with Timoni West that the activities page is woefully deficient:

This page should be letting me know who’s posted photos since I last logged-in, but it almost doesn’t. An awful lot of contact’s photos ‘slip by’ unless I click on the latest uploads page or each person’s photostream. With 300+ contacts, the latter option isn’t viable. All I have is a thin static strip of thumbnails at the bottom of the activities page.

If it were up to me, the Flickr blog link would go to the bottom of the page along with “people you may know” and instead have comments and uploads more prominent at the top of the page. Like the latest tweets on Twitter, these could be delivered in real-time.

Perhaps the worst feature is the absolutely useless “replies to your comments” page. I often comment on other people’s photos, yet tracking their responses a few days later is near impossible. In this realm, Facebook wins hands-down with their “notifications” tab at the top of the page. Unlike Facebook, Flickr lists as a “response” any comment that any user has added to any photo that I have commented on at any time. Think about it: That’s an appallingly low signal to noise ratio. So basically I have to remember to manually ‘chase up’ any questions or comments that I may have asked a photographer. I honestly don’t remember most of the time.

2. Geotagging is a half-finished idea

One of the best innovations to emerge from Flickr (back in 2006) was geotagging, which is where an image can be added to a map to show where it was taken. This is brilliant, because it provides a map beside each photo that users can click on to see where the image was taken.

Or so it should. Unfortunately, I live in Australia.

The above is an image of Sydney Harbour Bridge that I shot back in 2007. As you can see, there is an unlabelled map and geographical information presented to the right. If I hover my mouse over the map and zoom in, this is what I get:

What a useless map! Yet if I do the same for this image of the Mall of Asia in Manila, Philippines, I get a detailed map with street names, which can be enlarged:

Similar applies for this photograph of the famous Ginza neon signs in Tokyo, Japan:

So why is it possible to provide detailed maps for Japan and the Philippines, but not Australia?

Worse still, Flickr actually fabricates Australian locations. For instance, if I try to add something to the northern part of Melbourne’s CBD, Flickr will call it “Melbourne Heliport”, of which there is no such location. This image of Mill Park library is actually in the fictional location of “Nillumbik” rather than “Mill Park”. Whilst Flickr has added a facility to choose a location should they get it wrong, it’s not much use if the correct suburb name isn’t even on the list!

Flickr have been hearing complaints about this for years and done nothing.

3. Flickr needs ‘Circles’

One of the common criticisms of Facebook was that there was no way to segregate your content. Everyone from ones’ mother to a preschool classmate or a neighbour had to be a “friend” and therefore saw all the same content.

When Google+ launched, they introduced “circles”. A user can have as many circles as they like consisting of whomever they wish. They can then serve content selectively to their various circles.

In Flickr’s case, we are stuck with “Contact”, “Friend” or “Family”. Back in the day, this made Flickr look a whole lot more innovative than Facebook but now it is Flickr who is lagging behind. I would desperately like to divide my “Friends” up into sub-groups, but can’t. This means that I have to make some tough choices when uploading private photos, the sort of choices that Google+ users don’t need to think about.

Is Flickr in decline?

This is a hotly-debated topic.

According to Alexa, Flickr is losing a lot of traffic and even anecdotally, I sense the same thing. People who used to be active on Flickr are dropping-off. Comments on my photos have been in a steady decline for ages now and images that would have easily gained me 20+ comments a couple of years ago are now earning me less.

Photographer Thomas Hawk, who has written extensively about Flickr, seems to believe that people are leaving Flickr in droves for Google+. I am less convinced. I do agree that people are leaving but it seems to me that Facebook is winning the ‘social photography’ battle, despite it’s appalling treatment of photos. Whether Google+ will overtake Facebook as the first choice for ‘social photographers’, time will tell.

My view is that there is an effective ‘schism’ emerging in the vast world of online photography.

Back in 2006/7, Facebook was in its infancy as a social medium, although growing. MySpace was still dominant but really didn’t handle photos well. Both Flickr and digital photography were mature and so for most people, Flickr was the obvious place to upload and share photos. This applied as much to serious photographers (who enjoy the art) as the ‘social photographers’ who were just interested in documenting their weekend parties and the like.

Fast forward to 2012 and the landscape is vastly altered. Facebook is in the ascendency and continues to evolve rapidly. Google has launched Google+ to compete and is rapidly growing. Both social media websites make the sharing of private photos very easy, because users have a network of friends who will log-on to these networks regardless of whether they are sharing photos of themselves or not. They are there to share news and gossip and the photography is merely an add-on.

From my experience, if I want to share my private ‘social’ photos on Flickr, I have to prompt people because for the most part, my friends will not log onto Flickr unless they want to upload some of their own pictures or inspect mine. They are not interested in photography per se.

I think what might be happening is that the social photographers are probably leaving Flickr and taking up residence at Facebook or Google+.

The people who remain are the serious photographers who enjoy the art of photography and occasionally have some ‘social’ photos to share privately with family or friends. Under this scenario, it would seem logical to believe that Flickr will continue to decline until the majority of its users are the people who enjoy photographic art.

The future of Flickr

It doesn’t help that the aforementioned problems aren’t addressed by Yahoo.

Facebook and Google+ are working tirelessly to innovate and make sharing easier, whilst Flickr stagnates. One could say that the loss of ‘social photographers’ from Flickr is inevitable simply because Flickr is a photo-sharing site and Facebook and Google+ are all-encompassing social media. Perhaps YouTube will suffer a similar fate in coming years when videography becomes cheaper and video-hosting on Facebook and Google+ improves?

A bigger problem is faced by Flickr if the photographic enthusiasts leave the site.

Thomas Hawk claims that this is what is happening and cites the departure of Ingo Meckmann as an example. I don’t know either of these people and cannot say what agendas they may have or how influential they really are. I hope Hawk is wrong, but it’s possible that he’d know more than I.

For professionals and photographic enthusiasts like myself, Flickr is still the better service. There are plenty more features that Flickr has that Google+ doesn’t, but I am sure that won’t last forever unless something changes at Yahoo.

Historically, Flickr has always had a good community. This community is shrinking and it’s time that Flickr does something to stop the decline. It’s not too late but Flickr (like Yahoo) has to get back into the business of innovation. Yahoo needs to make Flickr as dynamic and interactive and easy-to-used as the technology of 2012 will allow.

Flickr will also probably need to look at their pricing structure as Google+ grows and expands. For now, I still believe US$25 per annum is a good price to pay for unlimited uploads, but I suspect that Google will eventually try to undercut Flickr.

Back on 13 April 2006 when I joined Flickr, it was like a revelation. As Flickr developed through 2007 and 2008, it only became more exciting. It won’t be hard for Yahoo to rejuvenate Flickr, but the resources and the will need to be there.

With the hiring of Scott Thompson as CEO, let’s hope there’s some positive change in the air for Flickr in 2012.

Update:

11:10am, 14 January 2012: Flickr have published a blog post pledging that the company is “starting 2012 with a renewed sense of focus” and that users can expect “significant updates to Flickr’s user experience, new features and offerings across devices”. You can read more on the Flickr Blog.

I am a “hands-on” sort of web designer: All of the graphic design, the content and the coding (or implementation in the case of packages) is mine. Of course, I use a wide range of tools to design and build my websites and in 2011 it adds up to a massive body of work. In the process, I make many discoveries.

For quite some time, I have wanted an outlet where I could share coding workarounds and snippets for others to benefit from. I have also wanted an outlet to write specifically about some of the technical aspects of web design and the internet.

The Grapevine never felt like the right place to do this. Hence code.adonline has been created.

Rest assured that the Grapevine will remain exactly as it is: General in nature and aimed at a broad audience. I’ll continue to write engaging and thoroughly-researched articles for you to enjoy on the Grapevine and save the technical stuff for code.

If you’d like to read the first introductory article on code, go to http://code.adonline.id.au/welcome/ Your feedback would be most welcome, either on this blog or on code.adonline.

Enjoy!

A few minutes updating your social media bookmarks could really give you some peace of mind.

Normally internet traffic is transmitted via HTTP or Hyper Text Transfer Protocol, which isn’t very secure at all. In fact, everything that you send between your PC and a website could theoretically be intercepted by a third party, which includes passwords and data. Whilst practically the chances of this are small, it does happen and you certainly wouldn’t want sensitive material being transmitted this way.

Thankfully, the answer to this problem is HTTPS, or Hyper Text Transfer Protocol Secure, which adds SSL/TSL encryption to HTTP. By using HTTPS, you can ensure that all data sent between your computer and a web server is encrypted, and therefore cannot be intercepted by third parties. The security comes from the fact that a person who managed to intercept the signal would only have gibberish to work with, so your data is safe.

Your bank and your email provider will use HTTPS to encrypt your data when you log on.

You can tell if a site is secure because the web address will start with https:// instead of the usual http:// and there will be a coloured panel in the address bar in Firefox and a padlock symbol in Internet Explorer (shown below).

Secure websites are issued with certificates from recognised authorities. I won’t detail how this works in this article, but suffice to say that a properly secured website will have a certificate issued to it. You should not trust HTTPS sites that lack a proper certificate. Your browser will alert you to such sites before they load.

If an HTTPS site combines both secure and non-secure components (a very bad practice) a broken padlock symbol will be displayed. You can use such a site at your own risk.

Of course it isn’t just third parties ‘somewhere in cyberspace’ that you might want to protect your private data from. In fact, it could be much closer to home.

Many employees (whether permitted or not) use social media at work. I am not going to discuss the rights or wrongs of such practices, but I suggest that if one is going to use social media at work,  they may want to consider whether they want their employer knowing what they searched for on Google, posted on Facebook, or discussed in Twitter.

Pros and Cons of HTTPS

Accessing websites via HTTPS effectively prevents your employer, IT department, school, university, or even your ISP from knowing what you searched-for and posted online. But beware, this comes with some significant qualifiers!

Google comes in an SSL version. If you search for a term – let’s say “widgets” – then your employer will be able to use network records to detect that you have been on Google, but not that you have searched for “widgets”. If you used normal Google, this information would be disclosed. However, as soon as you leave Google – let’s say you go to widgets.com – then your employer can see that you went to that site. So even if the boss can’t tell what you’re searching for, there might be other clues in your online behaviour that give it away

Additionally, IT departments have other tools to see what you might be doing online, such as random anonymous screen grabs. No amount of HTTPS will save you from an incriminating screen grab!

Finally, we’ve all heard about the famous cases of people criticising their employers on Facebook, only to be caught and then summarily sacked. Again, HTTPS won’t save you if you’ve made your boss, or his lackeys, your “contacts” on Facebook or you have posted a defamatory rant to Twitter where anyone can read it. So be sensible.

Social Media Using HTTPS

To assist you in keeping your private correspondence private, many social media websites (and a few other popular services) now offer HTTPS or SSL versions of their websites. Here’s a list of the most popular social media websites, and their secure addresses.

You might notice that HTTPS sites take slightly longer to load, but that’s because your secure connection is being made.

DeviantArt: https://secure.deviantart.com/

Facebook: https://ssl.facebook.com/

Flickr: https://secure.flickr.com/

Friendster: https://www.friendster.com/

Google Buzz: https://www.google.com/buzz/

LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/

Multiply: https://multiply.com/

MySpace: https://secure.myspace.com/

Twitter: https://twitter.com/

YouTube: https://www.youtube.com/

Other online resources

Google Search: https://encrypted.google.com/

Wikipedia: https://secure.wikimedia.org/

I love books!

I have a large collection of books covering such varied topics as Australian politicians, history, architecture and travel  mixed in with tomes about plant physiology and molecular genetics. My personal and professional interests are co-mingled on a vast series of bookshelves. Whenever I want to check a fact, verify a claim, or just relax and read a story, my books are right there.

For that, I can thank the book shops (and let’s be fair, probably my education too). For myself, and millions of other Australians, looking through bookshops is an enjoyable task that introduces us all to new and  interesting titles. Yet apparently, the internet threatens the very survival of the bookshop as we know it.

For starters, let me say that I think talk of the ‘pending death of the bookshop’ is over-hyped. I simply don’t believe that bookshops will become redundant, although I realise that their market share (and perhaps commercial influence) will fall in time. There is much potential in the e-book, although there’s a lot lacking too. That said, the possible demise of REDGroup, which owns Angus & Robertson and Borders (in Australia only) is a very worrying development.

In Victoria, the books market seems to consist of Borders (which has the biggest range), Angus & Robertson (the biggest chain), Dymocks and Collins (two smaller chains) and a host of smaller, niche and specialist stores. There’s a gulf between the size of Borders and the smaller chains. Where Borders lacks in value, it compensates with range. And range is important.

Borders is very popular and on account of that, the company encourages a vast number of people to read. I firmly believe that reading, along with education, faith and public broadcasting are the key pathways to the development of an intellectual, enlightened and reasoned mind. I certainly don’t suggest that without Borders, society will be ruined. However, unlike most bookshops, Borders encourages dining and reading within their stores and so they effectively make books more accessible. That benefits us all.

The range of books I find at Borders is unmatched anywhere else. I cannot tell you how many books I have read because I saw them in Borders, where they weren’t stocked elsewhere.

I love reading about Australian political history. Aussie politics is admittedly not a topic that enjoys mainstream appeal. Whilst most bookshops would sell the popular volumes such as The Latham Diaries or Lazarus Rising (John Howard’s autobiography), they’re unlikely to sell The Long Slow Death of White Australia or Andrew Fisher: Prime Minister of Australia or Rudd’s Way. I know that these books are occasionally available elsewhere, but they’re much more difficult to locate and I know that I’d be very reluctant to buy them online without seeing them first.

The Australian book retailers often complain that internet booksellers are taking their market.

As the Australian dollar reaches parity with the United States dollar, there’s never been a better time to buy books online. Australia’s book industry is effectively protected behind a tariff wall, so books sold here are more expensive that those bought overseas. Because the Australian economy slowed (and hence discretionary spending fell) during the Global Financial Crisis, it’s no wonder that the book retailers may be ‘doing it tough’.

Yet the internet can never really replace bookshops for several important reasons: If it weren’t for bookshops, it would be much harder to know that certain titles even existed. People may discover that Amazon sells books much cheaper than Australian retail, but I suspect that most people buy books that they’ve already seen somewhere else, decided upon purchasing, then shopped online where the price is better. Bookshops provide customers with exposure.

The internet also won’t replace bookshops because browsing is much harder online. Think about how many times you’ve picked up a book that seemed so promising only to flick through its pages and discover otherwise. At least in such circumstances, you’ve not committed to purchasing the book.

There is some debate about whether e-books will simply make paper books obsolete. I suggest that they won’t, although I certainly see that for fiction (and newspapers or magazines) they may be better than the paper version. For non-fiction, I believe they’d make a poor substitute although I can see potential value even here (for instance, a plant physiology book that could incorporate a 3D model of a plant cell rather than a diagrammatic outline). I don’t think viewing detailed architectural plans or high-resolution images of an Australopithecus skull on a small screen would be much of a substitute for a high-gloss fold-out printed page.

For some, there is also the romantic notion of holding books, smelling the paper and feeling the texture of the page. Whilst that is a niche interest (similar to music buffs who insist on listening to vinyl or photographers who use film), I don’t see that as a mainstream concern.

Of course, in these changing times bookshops need to adjust and adapt. Perhaps like car manufacturers, television networks or hardware stores, there just isn’t as much room in the Australian market as there used to be for so many players.

If Borders and Angus & Robertson were to fail (and this is no certainty), it would be an unfortunate loss. Aside from the jobs directly lost, it would also likely hurt the Australian book publishing industry.

I have no doubt that like the newspaper and broadcasting industries, the book industry is entering a period of substantial change and possible consolidation. It will be fascinating to see what changes, both in a corporate and technological sense, emerge in the coming decade.

Whilst I firmly believe that e-books offer immense opportunities, I hope that I will always have the opportunity to browse real books in a real shop. After all, real books don’t need batteries, charging or firmware upgrades.

For instance, my Flickr account is linked with my Facebook account, so that as soon as I post an image on Flickr, it is automatically syndicated to my Facebook wall so that my Facebook contacts can see the image too. All of that happens and I don’t need to do a thing.

^{Image by David Rutt. Used in accordance with a Creative Commons license.}

Linking accounts is a great way to generate traffic and make sharing easy.  Because social media sites like Flickr, Facebook and Twitter are so popular, there is an army of programmers developing ‘apps‘ that will seamlessly integrate various social media.

Things become more challenging for people like me who prefer to host their own content on their own websites wherever possible. Plug-and-play apps suddenly become much harder to source. And when they are sourced, only half of them work as intended, from my experience.

My cousin recently suggested that instead of manually typing a “wall post” in Facebook to advise my readers that I’d written another article, I should use an app like Networked Blogs to automatically ping Facebook. That way, a link to my latest blog post would automatically appear on my wall, just like my Flickr photographs do.

For both practical and ideological reasons, I am keen to minimise my use of third-party apps in Facebook. But the idea made me think about whether I could develop my own Facebook app to syndicate my own blog posts. Aside from removing the reliance on a third-party, it would also look rather impressive!

The Grapevine is powered by WordPress, which is installed on my web server. After some searching, I found a WordPress plugin called WPBook which would manage the sending part of the communication between my blog and Facebook. The best part is that the plugin requires one to develop their own Facebook application in order to manage the receiving part on the Facebook side. Perfect!

Following the detailed instructions, I was able to get the plugin installed in WordPress and an application generated in Facebook within 10 minutes.

In essence, this post is the final test… I should be able to publish this page on The Grapevine and then see it syndicated on Facebook a few minutes later.

Wish me luck!

Update, 27 January 2010:

The Facebook app and WordPress plugin have worked, except for thumbnail generation. Thumbnails will generate when I add a link by hand, but not when I use my new Facebook app.

Australian Radio Online is a unique website that provides a one-stop point for people who want to listen to Aussie radio stations over the net. The portal was started in 2001, and has grown to be the most popular part of my website. Every day, thousands of people pay a visit, so it gives me great satisfaction to provide a service that people will appreciate.

Aside from a sleeker presentation, the new-look website has some exciting features including a new jQuery-dependent dynamic table system that allows visitors to sort radio stations on any criterion they desire. In addition, new interactive features such as a Twitter feed have been incorporated.

On a technical level, the new design represents two small milestones for me.

Firstly, Australian Radio Online is the first of my websites to abandon table-based design in favour of Cascading Style Sheets (CSS). Website designs based on CCS are quicker to load, easier to adjust and the CSS system provides a lot more design flexibility and consistency. I have been using CSS as a support for tables-based designs for years, but have never built an entire website with CSS-based design before. Building  a site from scratch using CSS has been very hard work, but I have learned a great deal and am confident that I can use those skills for updating other parts of my website as the need arises.

The second milestone is that the entire website is 100% compliant with the XHTML 1.0 Transitional web standard. Standards compliance ensures that websites will render correctly in as many browsers and under as many operating systems as possible. Standards compliance also ensures that visually impaired website visitors who use screen readers will be able to enjoy the website as much as everyone else.

You can access the refurbished Australian Radio Online website at http://www.adonline.id.au/radio/ If you like the website, why not subscribe to it on Twitter @AustraliaRadio.

If you’re viewing this web page through the Internet Explorer 6 (IE6) browser, you will see an advisory at the top asking you to update.  You are strongly urged to do so.

IE6 was released in 2001 and has since been superseded by two newer versions. The latest version is Internet Explorer 8, which you can download for free here.

IE6 has several  key problems:

1. IE6 doesn’t support many common web standards, such as key aspects of CSS (Cascading Style Sheets) which are integral to most modern websites (including this one).

2. IE6 is extremely susceptible to virus attacks, because of its poor security suite.

3. Microsoft is phasing out support for IE6.

Designing websites that render in all browsers is challenging enough as it is. Designing a website for a decade-old browser is almost impossible!  In recent times Google, Facebook and YouTube have all stopped supporting IE6, and as of 3 August 2010, so have I. According to my web stats, 8% of readers are using IE6 or IE5.

Internet Explorer is free, and will takes less than 5 minutes to update. Of course there are many other great free browsers, such as Firefox, Safari and Opera that you can use as an alternative.

If you’re behind a corporate firewall, please ask your employer to allow you to upgrade.

Google Maps Earth View requires the installation of a small plugin to enable it to function on individual computers. Once installed, a person can ‘fly’ around a city, looking at a landscape of buildings and hills that is rendered in 3D in varying degrees of accuracy.

^{Render of Sydney, NSW, Australia, showing the Opera House and Harbour Bridge.}

So far, detailed CBD Earth renders been added to the maps of Brisbane (Qld.), Melbourne (Vic.) and Sydney (NSW). A small amount of 3D rendering has been applied to maps of Adelaide (SA), Cairns (Qld.), Canberra (ACT), Gold Coast City (Qld.), Hobart (Tas.), Launceston (Tas.), Perth (WA) and Wollongong (NSW).

Google Maps Earth View is a fun website to use, but the difficult directions control  panel makes navigation a challenge sometimes. In the window above, you can watch a 5-minute video presentation that I have created, demonstrating some of the features and problems.

Alternatively,  you can watch a high-resolution version of the video on YouTube.

^{Render of Brisbane, Qld., Australia.}

Because it is in its infancy, the amount of rendering is minimal, But in time, it will be possible to travel around Australia and the world, looking at the various sites.

On an international level, particular detail can be seen in the renders of Tokyo (Japan), Washington D.C. (USA), Paris (France) and London (UK). One of the funniest renders is  of the Kim Il-sung monument in Pyongyang, North Korea, which is very reminiscent of Flat Stanley!

^{Parliament House in Canberra, ACT, Australia.}

No doubt many people will enjoy this website as it grows and develops. You can access the website via http://maps.google.com.au and the plugin can be downloaded from http://earth.google.com/plugin/.

Now I wonder if it was worth the bother? The sad truth is that Facebook is a very shallow pool in which to wade.

When I first joined, Facebook was mildly interesting. I bumped into a few people that I’d not seen for a while, so it was good to see what they were up to. I was also able to enjoy the photos, personal observations, and other contributions of my work colleagues, friends and family that I’d previously been excluded from. Those were also good.

But there was a lot about Facebook that wasn’t good.

Signing up on Day 1 was easy, but adjusting all the default privacy settings to a level that actually respected my privacy was very time-consuming.

In terms of coding and functionality, there’s no way to embed image thumbnails nor hyperlinks on Facebook within comments. More incredibly, there’s no way of editing posts. In cases where typographic mistakes are identified or errors-of-fact emerge, the only choice is to delete and re-post a comment. If that is done after someone has commented, their contribution is deleted too.

What surprised me more was the very shallow nature of the enterprise (more than I expected). People who would never talk to me in real life suddenly and inexplicably wanted to become a “friend” on Facebook.

I have run my own website since 1998, so I probably come from the “old school” of the internet where people hosted personal websites and interacted via forums and blogs. Blogs have really taken off in the “Web 2.0” era, and this has been a blessing. There’s nothing I like more on the internet than to read informed, thoughtful and heartfelt opinion on topics, even those for which I have opposing views. I also enjoy the discussion that follows.

Likewise, I thoroughly enjoy writing blog articles and interacting with my readers. The comments following my recent article about the Bacchus Marsh “Avenue of Honour” provide a good example of this, as does my famous post about Triple J.

Sadly, Facebook seems geared entirely to discourage this sort of depth and texture. Actual discussion is rare. Instead, it favours triviality and superficiality. The online quiz results, spam advertising (in the form of “liking” something), “gifts” or stupid status updates just become tiring after a while. The pointless bra colour meme was especially notable in this regard.

I won’t suspend my account just yet, although as the New York Times reports, this is an increasing trend. But I will definitely pull-back on the posts and see how it pans out. Basically, I am just losing interest.

Facebook always did seem over-hyped. As it turns out, it is.

Why bother, you might ask?

The previous design was starting to look cluttered and was not adapting well to expansion in the website. Whilst considering the new look for the website, I had a few aims:

1. I wanted a design that was unique, modern, but also personal.

2. I wanted to preserve the “floral grunge” style of the previous design, but without it being so messy. (Does that make sense?!)

3. I wanted to unify the design of my blog with my general website. (Previously, the two didn’t unify).

4. I wanted to get the designing and implementation done in as shorter time as possible. (There are plenty of other things I’d rather do with my time!)

My task over the last few weeks has been to conceptualise the layout and site architecture, design the graphic elements, code the HTML and CSS, implement the PHP-includes and scripts, then test it all out to make sure it worked well in both Firefox and Internet Explorer.

Despite the intense workload, all of that was relatively easy. What wasn’t easy for me was to design a WordPress theme from scratch. Whilst the WordPress theme codex was useful, I gained as much from pulling the old theme apart to see how it all worked. I am pleased with the new look, and have learnt a lot from working on it. And best of all, my blog now has a completely unique appearance.

There are just few small loose ends that need to be tied-up, but basically the job is done. I hope this design lasts a little longer than the previous one!